Toldos

Removing the Shackles

By Rabbi Pinchas Avruch

As Yaakov (Jacob) approached his father Yitzchak (Isaac) for the Divine
blessings for material sustenance, he did so dressed as his coarse twin,
Esav (Esau). This scheme was undertaken in accordance with the prophecy of
his mother Rivka (Rebecca) that Yaakov - who was already destined to receive
the Divine blessings for the spiritual and national providence promised to
their grandfather, Avraham (see Beraishis/Genesis 28:3-4) - would need this
blessing, too, if he was to survive.

"Yaakov said to his father, '...Rise up, please, sit and eat of my game...'
and So Yaakov drew close to Yitzchak his father who felt him and said, 'The
voice is Yaakov's voice but the hands are Esav's hands.'" (27:19,22) Rashi
explains that the voice recognition was not an issue of insufficient
disguise; rather it was an issue of verbiage. Yaakov would request, "Father,
rise up, please," where Esav would say "Get up, father!" (27:31)

But the Medrash Rabba explains that the honoring of his father was of
paramount import to Esav. This evil son offered one hundred times more honor
to Yitzchak than did the righteous Second Temple era sage Rabban Shimon ben
Gamliel to his father. Esav genuinely felt compelled to wear his most formal
wear when serving his father; Rabban Shimon could have gone through the
motions, attempting duplication of Esav's dedication, but it would have been
an empty, meaningless act. If Esav's sensitivity to his father's honor was
so profound, his actions and his words are most incongruous! How could he
speak to Yitzchak in such a crass manner? It is even more perplexing
considering Esav's objective of putting Yitzchak in the proper frame of mind
prior to offering his blessing!

Rabbi Alter Henach Leibowitz (Rosh Yeshiva/Dean of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in
Kew Gardens Hills, New York) observes that one's habits in speech are such
an ingrained element of the personality that they come to surface in all
situations. Thus, no matter how much honor Esav truly desired to bestow upon
his father, his biting, chiding tone came through. For speech is a
manifestation of the soul, as Onkelos (authoritative Aramaic interpretive
translation by the Tannaic-era proselyte Onkelos, c.90) translates Adam's
soul of "life" (2,7) as the power of "[intelligent] speech". Effecting
genuine change in one's speech demands an overhaul of one's core
personality, no small feat.

Rabbi Leibowitz draws the similarity to changing any one of our negative
midos (character traits), a challenge the great ethicist Rabbi Yisrael
Salanter (1810-1883; founder and spiritual father of the Mussar movement, a
moral movement based on the study of traditional ethical literature and
development of techniques for spiritual and character growth) called more
difficult than learning through the entirety of the Talmudic and Midrashic
Oral Tradition. Not addressing these spiritual shortcomings can be extremely
self-defeating. Rabbi Leibowitz concludes that Esav's negative trait of
cruelty was, to his detriment, the root cause of in his selling his
birthright to Yaakov. Nachmanides (R' Moshe ben Nachman; 1194-1270; of
Gerona, Spain; one of the leading Torah scholars of the Middle Ages)
explains that his own sense of cruelty turned on him and caused himself harm
by cruelly selling a birthright that he knew in his core essence to be most
valuable.

As we strive to develop our "G-d consciousness", to foster the growth of
every Jew's Divine spark and bring our G-dliness to the fore, we need to
realize that we cannot move forward so long as we are shackled in place by
bad character traits. Freedom is not the ability to DO what you want;
freedom is the ability to DETERMINE what is in your best interest and ACT
upon it. One who is "free" to react with jealousy, hate, rage, haughtiness
and a pursuit of desires may not be a slave to another human...but is very
much enslaved to himself. Only when we succeed in removing these fetters
will our Jewish selves truly be free to soar.